Further Details on Intel 'Valleyview' Atom CPUs Leaked

Intel plans to launch its next generation of Atom processors based on 22nm microarchitecture as early as Q4 of this year. According to CPU World, these 22nm chips are named 'Silvermont' and are intended to replace Intel's current generation of 32nm 'Clover Trail' chips.

According to CPU World, the details of the new Atom Silvermont processors were leaked by the German site computerbase.de that discovered a leaked Intel document on a Baidu website. These next generation Atom processors are the heart of ValleyView that is Intel's new system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution. The name of the SoC platform is 'Bay Trail' but there was no mention of the fanless Atom platform called Balboa Pier when we reported about the new Atom processor in March this year.

Intel's ValleyView solution is expected to arrive in four flavors:-

VV-T for portable devices

VV-I for industrial use

VV-D for desktop systems

VV-M for netbooks

According to the block diagram above, the Silvermont CPU is expected to be a quad-core chip; however, there will be variants of the Bay Trial platform that will feature ValleyView SoCs in their single and dual-core SKUs, as well as quad-core versions. In terms of its graphics engines, our earlier report has been confirmed as the new Atom Silvermont processor will feature four onboard Intel 7th generation GPUs (Intel HD 4000) as well as a VXD392 IP core. Hence, the chip will support hardware decoding for a broad variety of video codecs. The leaked document also claims that 1080p video will run smoothly at 60fps, requiring less than 5-percent of CPU usage when coupled with chip's onboard GPUs processing capabilities.

The Silvermont processors will available in two types of packages:-

27mm x 25mm (Type-3)

17mm x 17mm (Type-4)

Type-3 chips will be optimized for embedded and automotive systems while the Type-4 ones are well-suited for low-power systems, running applications in virtual computing environments.